Eric Bana on Henry VIII

From one incredible hulk to another - Eric Bana explains why he couldn’t wait to play one of the largest figures in English history, Henry VIII

It's all Hans Holbein's fault. Having convinced Henry VIII that dreary Anne of Cleves was the choicest bit of crumpet to have walked the Rhineland, the artist did a number on Henry himself. Holbein's famous portrait of him - stern, stout, red-bearded, quite possibly about to chuck a chicken leg over his shoulder - has remained the template for the monarch ever since. On screen, from Robert Shaw's lusty megalomaniac (A Man for All Seasons) to Sid James's lusting nymphomaniac (Carry on Henry), Holbein's image, by and large, has been conformed to. Only recently has there has been a little deviation: Ray Winstone's East End godfather in the television Henry VIII, for example, or Jonathan Rhys Meyers's uncanny approximation of Rick from The Young Ones in the wonderfully trashy The Tudors.

Now, at last there is acknowledgment that before the gout-ridden spouse-decapitator came the young buck: athlete and aesthete, albeit with attention